Clinton lectures at Valley school

Charles J. Lewis, EXAMINER WASHINGTON BUREAU

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, September 6, 1995

1995-09-06 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA -- SELMA, Fresno County - President Clinton welcomed 20 eighth-graders back to school by delivering a history lecture recalling that one lesson of the Civil War was the need for tolerance.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Clinton's appearance Tuesday "before an ethnically diverse group of students" was the administration's response to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the front-runner among nine GOP candidates for president, who Monday urged the recognition of English as our official language.

Dole, R-Kan., told the American Legion convention in Indianapolis, "We must stop the practice of multilingual education as a means of instilling ethnic pride or as a therapy for low self-esteem or out of elitist guilt over a culture built on the traditions of the West."

Wrapping up a two-day visit to California, Clinton did not mention the "English first" movement or the anti-immigrant sentiments that motivate some of its backers.

But in visiting the 800-student Abraham Lincoln Middle School in this Central Valley farming town, he told the 20 eighth-graders that because the Civil War "came out the way it did," Americans had set out to try to live "in a nation that didn't discriminate against people based on their race."

Clinton told the five student body officers and 15 others picked by straws that two challenges they would face would be prospering as a nation in the global economy and dealing with racial, religious and ethnic differences.

Later, Clinton said at a school rally that he and the Republican-led Congress were working on a balanced budget but that it should not come at the expense of education spending.

"Education is not supposed to be a partisan political football, and it should not be when Congress returns," Clinton said, jabbing at proposed GOP education cuts.

The president contended that GOP cuts would hurt job training programs, Head Start, drug-free school programs, college grants and loans and the national service initiative called AmeriCorps. Republicans say many of these programs are wasteful and inefficient.

Clinton has proposed cutting the Education Department budget, now $33.5 billion, to $28.2 billion in fiscal 1996. The House has slashed the funding to $23 billion, and the Senate has yet to act on it.

Clinton has said the money saved from his cuts should be used to increase funding for such programs as his Goals 2000 plan, which gives states grants to improve teaching and learning standards. Clinton would nearly double the program's funding to $750 million for 1996. The House voted to kill it altogether.

Clinton's appearance in Selma - which calls itself the

"Raisin Capital of the World" - also prompted his claim that he had "probably consumed more raisins than any other president who ever held this office. And I've enjoyed every one of them." &lt;

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